Untitled

Gisborne Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1796, 29 June 1906, Page 2

A NATIONAL POLICY.

Unheu tlio abovo heading the N.Z Herald outlines a policy that should meot with approval of politicians of all shades of opinion. After show ing the different subjects to which attention should be given, the article proceeds :—Many things in the political life of our colony are complex and in dispute. This is frankly acknowledged by all men of independent thought, who, whatever views they may themselves hold upon debatable matters, do not hesitate to accord respect and toleration to honest and sincere opponents. Butjthe question of land settlement is extraordinarily simple, nor is that of transit facilities any more complicated if we strip it of partisan and sectional influences. No land goes begging in this colony which is averagely fertile, reasonably sized and conveniently situated ; every land ballot for such holdings is rushed by bona-fide applicants : in a single year, if the Land

Department could open up every block and if the Public Works Department could mako it available, there would not be in the entire colony a single section that was not carrying its settler. But the transit facilities do not exist. Over immense areas, particularly in the North, railways are non existent and roads a delusion and a snare. The settler may reach on foot any section in the colony, but without facilities he cannot send his products to market unless he turns pastoralist and confines his energies to products that will carry themselves to the slaughter-yards. Valuable as pastoral occupation may be under certain circumstances it is not upon the pastoral industry that the future of New Zealand is to be built. Wo want railways wherever railways will pay —not where they will not pay. We want roads wherever settlement calls for them—not only where they will buy a few votes. We want the land opened up wherever it is held idly, whether by the Crown or by native owners. And we want such energetic and equitable administration of the great State Departments -of lands, of Public Works, of Post Offices, of Education, and so forth—as will make these essential services an unqualified boon to the people of the colony and will not waste and squander their energies in partisan intriguos. If any thiuk that these things do not concern them we would ask upon what the prosperity of our cities, no less than of our country districts, is based. Is it pot upon the national production of wealth, upon the winning from the land of timber, gold, coal, gum, fjax, meat, grain, and butter, the most permanent apd desirable being the winnings of agriculture ? There are secondary industries, whose importance none should depreciate, but the primary industries are the basis of everything else. Unless we road the country, bridge tho streams, railway the distances the land cannot be effectively settled, the national output of wealth is retarded, industry is cramped, prosperity endangered. To make the colony productive, by removing the natural difficulties and by securing very necessary auxiliary reforms in Departmental methods, is what the .colony should expect from any Government deserving of the public confidence.